


fall down in cascades.

by ゼロ四 - yon (arurun)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blind Character, Blind jokes, But he's just jealous ok, Canon Compliant, Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, Deaf Character, Gen, Indifference to Physical Injuries, Ino-Shika-Cho are protective older siblings, Kiba is a Tsundere, Konohagakure | Hidden Leaf Village, Little bit of graphic injuries, Major Original Character(s), Neji has a rival, Neji probably has a stick up his ass, Original Character-centric, Ostracism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sign Language, kids being assholes, no i'm not, original genin team
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-13 13:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arurun/pseuds/%E3%82%BC%E3%83%AD%E5%9B%9B%20-%20yon
Summary: A blind kunoichi; a deaf that's been outcast; an Inuzuka without a sense of smell; and a girl who slowly loses her five senses. This is an OC-centric fic featuring a team in the same generation as Team Kakashi-- except, they're filled with a bunch of black sheep. They make themselves work... as best as they can.





	1. the girl with needles in her arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Uhm, hi! This is an original team fanfic... idk if anyone would actually read this though, cause like, OC fics generally don't really do too well in AO3 and all that. I just needed somewhere to put this story and thought, why not here, but if you do read this, thanks so much for picking this up and giving this book a chance! It means a ton to me!
> 
> This book is a semi-lighthearted story featuring characters with physical disabilities, but still manage to become shinobi in their journey. This will follow canon events, but the characters will not be changing the timeline (this is not a fix-it-fic, more of an OC-insert fic). 
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoy?

Ino sighs.

A boy who she doesn’t know the name of shrieks, “ahhhh!! Get it away from me, that looks creepy as hell!!”

Her eyes land on the orange-haired girl that was chasing the boy. 

Said girl raises a hand in the air, suspiciously needle-like objects protruding from parts of the appendage. Her arm resembles a cactus, and with a wide smile on her face the girl brings it closer to the boy that only screams bloody murder at the sight.

“Look, look what I can do!” she sounds entirely enthusiastic.

“AHHHHh!!!”

“Isn’t this cool?!”

“AaaAAAHHH!!”

“Stop screaming, look!”

“AAAAAHHHHH!!!”

Ino groans at the sight, a hand to her face as if she can’t bear to see the pitiful view before her. Chouji munches on his bag of potato chips, sympathetically offering a bite to his friend. Shikamaru snores, slumped against Chouji dead asleep, blissfully unaware of the chaos.

Ino mulls. So much for their dumb Ino-Shika-Chou playdate.

“Ino, Ino! Look, I can stick needles like, all over my arm!”

Ino flinches back toward the tree behind her, looking evidently disgusted. Because ohmy _ god _ her arm is full of needles, did she use her arm as a pincushion--

“That’s… awesome, Nori,” she tries, trying not to look at the arm at all.

“It looks cool and all,” Chouji seems a little more unaffected than Ino, leaning over to cast a glance at the arm before fixing his curious eyes on Nori. “But doesn’t that hurt, Nori-chan?”

Nori crouches down before the trio, her red muffler dragging across the ground and her needle-arm lying aside. Ino wonders why her wounds aren’t bleeding-- one finger twitches strangely, and her elbow shivers unnaturally. Yet, the ginger acts like she doesn’t even notice a thing.

Looking genuinely confused, she asks the plump boy, “are needles supposed to hurt or something?”

Chouji’s face warps into one of utmost horror, and Ino honestly can’t blame him. Shikamaru had woken up half a moment ago-- now he’s sprawled over Chouji’s arm and too lazy to get up, but the look of bafflement across his face is the most emotion Ino has seen in a while.

“Nori’s got this thing where uh,” Ino begins to explain, taking words from her father’s mouth, “she can’t feel physical pain. Or something.”

Now Chouji puts his bag of potato chips on the ground. And truly, that has some kind of groundbreaking meaning to it, but Ino, again, can’t blame him.

“You can’t feel  _ pain _ ??”

Shikamaru is alert for once and that’s enough to call the doctors for, and yes, Ino can’t blame him either. Because--

“That’s so--  _ convenient _ ,” he gapes, “I won’t have to be afraid of Mom hitting me and I won’t get headaches from sleeping too much.”

“You can get headaches from sleeping too much?!” Nori responds explosively, “wait, how does a ‘headache’ feel like anyways?”

“It feels  _ terrible _ , sometimes you just want to  _ die _ ,” Shikamaru grunts, “but apparently sleeping off a sleep headache makes no sense.”

“Does that mean you don’t get tummyaches too?” Chouji asks, sulking, “that’s no fair, that means you can eat as much as you want.”

When Nori laughs a little sheepishly, Ino senses something more. But she doesn’t chase after the issue, and simply they watch with some interest as the girl settles down before them and begins to pluck the senbon out of her arm one by one.

Unmistakable red flows from each hole the needle leaves behind.

In muted horror, the three’s expressions quickly warp into fear.

“You’re bleeding,” Ino says. A great observation, but somehow-- she said it, because it didn’t seem like Nori even  _ noticed _ .

Chouji remembers being pricked by needles before. He’d carelessly touched a cactus in his garden once-- the procedures his mother went through just to get the prick out of his skin-- it was horrendous. He almost wanted to envy the girl, being able to remove so many needles at once without so much as a flinch.

But the blood.

“Wait, Nori,” Shikamaru realizes quickly, sitting upright and stopping the girl from taking out another needle, “don’t-- don’t do that anymore.”

Nori eyes their concern with an expression that could only mean she was utterly perplexed. 

“Why?” she asks, and although there’s no hurt in her tone she looks as if she was being reprimanded unfairly.

Shikamaru’s not sure where to start.

“Just- Just because you can’t feel pain,” he begins-- he’s shaken. Surprised. He’s never seen this happen before and troublesome situations be damned in this one, “it doesn’t mean you don’t get hurt, Nori.”

“But it doesn’t hurt.”

“Yes, but it’s bleeding!” Ino catches the point Shikamaru was making, reaching out to the girl’s non-needled arm so she wouldn’t touch them anymore. The realization flashes through her almost fearfully, and panic fills her, “that-- look, Nori, let’s just--”

Nori blinks, not too sure why the girl’s so flustered. “Is it bad when I bleed?”

“Yes!” Ino leaps at that, “very bad! Very, very bad!” she says it again as if it needed clarification. 

“Oh…” the girl looks baffled, struck by a strange new understanding but looking absolutely doubtful.

Ino gets up, pulling the girl up by the arm, “c’mon, we’re going to the hospital!”

“Eh? Why?”

“When you bleed, you go to a doctor!” Ino reprimands sharply at the girl, her other hand grasping Shikamaru’s shirt collar to tug him up.

Chouji stands up, because they’re apparently following the girls now, “the hospital’s too far so let’s go to the clinic instead,” he offers weakly.

“I don’t need to be there,” Shikamaru whines without any force in his argument, “leave me here, walking is troublesome…”

Nori turns to her arm, the pale flesh already streaming with the watery red substance-- she’s more entranced than she is unnerved. It felt like a ticklish, warm substance-- but she still couldn’t quite understand anything beyond  _ blood is bad _ . Is blood poisonous or something?

“When I bleed… I go to the hospital…” Nori repeats like it’s a foreign concept, “...why?”

“Because I said so!” Ino gives up, utterly exasperated by lack of common sense, “Nori, next time you see any blood on you  _ promise me _ you’ll get it treated.”

Nori is anything but convinced of how dire the situation really is.

But as Shikamaru holds her shoulders, dryly urging her each step forward-- she notes that Ino’s hand, wrapped tightly around her wrist, is trembling. Chouji doesn’t take a bite of his crisps on the way, and Nori feels a little--  _ guilty _ .

“I don’t really get it,” she admits, “but if you say so, Ino, I guess I will.”


	2. the beast without a nose.

He has a plaster over his nose and thick bandages wound around his throat . 

Kiba’s eyebrows are raised curiously, but the rest of his face is scrunched up in disgust at the foreign scent in his house. The stink of antiseptic and powder, he grimaces.

The boy before him shuffles uncomfortably under the stare.

His hair was yellow. A strange yellow-- Kiba doesn’t know a lot of people with blond hair to begin with, so he draws the connection to Naruto and immediately discards it. This boy, whoever he was, had hair much a shade duller.

It falls in a wavy curtains around him, framing his head and drooping around his shoulders. 

“This is Toboe, and his canine partner is Ginmaru,” his mother stiffly introduces, trying to sound like the kind and gentle mother she certainly wasn’t used to being, “he’ll be living with us, so be nice.”

“Hi, I’m Hana,” his sister greets immediately, approaching the boy with a smile and extending a hand in lieu of a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Toboe!”

_ Be nice, _ his mother says.

Kiba scowls.  _ Why? _

Toboe squirms into the leg of the woman beside him, evidently uncomfortable with the way Kiba is regarding him like he was in a glass casing on display.

His ninken, light silver and wolf-like in breed, was comfortably clutched to the boy’s chest. It yips cheerfully at the sight of Kiba, and Akamaru barks back in response.

Finally, Kiba spits, “girly boy.”

Toboe starts bawling just in time for his mother to land a punishing fist over his head. 

“I  _ said _ to be nice!” she reprimands sharply.

“Your hair’s long! You look weak!” Kiba retorts, then adds unnecessarily, “bandages!”

Hana is beside him now, pulling at his cheeks in retort, “bandages aren’t an insult, Kiba, he’s obviously hurt. Don’t be rude,” she scolds gently, but her grip on Kiba is strong and firm.

“Whlet mwe gooo!!” Kiba screams into her hands as Akamaru barks at him, (don’t you start scolding me too, Akamaru!) but the boy’s less than eager to admit his fault.

Tsume crouches down quickly, reaching for tissue and handkerchiefs as the blond boy just keeps crying out loud. And she honestly couldn’t blame the boy.

They may be a branch family and this boy may be a half breed, but what was  _ he’s too annoying _ as a reason to just drop him off at the main house? 

Poor kid just got abandoned by his parents, and he  _ knows _ .

Almost immediately, Toboe stops crying, sniffled once, and squirmed into a coughing fit, turning his face away from his ninken as he hacked. 

He turns back slowly after a while, palm stuck at his lips in some sort of horror.

Tsume is mortified to spot red at the corner of his fingers, and realizes that the tears aren’t just from Kiba apparently being  _ mean  _ to him.

“Oh my, you’re bleeding!” Tsume tries not to panic, wondering if the boy bit his lip or tongue or something similar--  _ oh _ , she remembers, the bandages! 

The boy was suffering from a horribly inflamed throat and nose. Some sort of poison, affecting the most vital of an Inuzuka’s innate senses.

His grip on his ninken is shaky, and it whimpers in concern.

Tsume sighs, and turns to Kiba, who looks horrified at what he’s caused. He looks painfully conflicted, horror flashing across his eyes and his mouth hung agape.

So she explains.

“Toboe’s hurt his throat and his nose, so Kiba,” Tsume manages a motherly smile, because yeah, she may be known as the roughest man among men, but she is still a  _ mother _ , “help him get used to being around in Konoha, alright?”

Kiba nods after a second, regretful but willing. They were the same age, so that makes sense. Makes more sense than having Hana do it.

Akamaru leaps from Kiba’s head to Toboe’s, nestling in the blond’s shoulders.

The silver pup squeaks, struggles out of his owner’s hands, and leaps onto his shoulders to confront the white-furred intruder.

“Hey, Akamaru!” Kiba calls unhelpfully. Apparently Akamaru likes that head better now.

Toboe whines at first, but morphs into laughter as the two ninken begin to argue about territory on top of him.

Tsume manages to clean the boy up, smiling fondly as the boy cheers up quickly, two ninken on either shoulder growling at each other.

Kiba, eyeing the scene with a sort of envy, groans and reaches in to grab the boy by the wrist.

“Stop stealing Akamaru!” he says accusingly, but not sharply. 

Toboe grins sheepishly, and speaks up in his soft, kind-of-muffled, sick-sounding voice, “okay, Kiba-kun, I’ll try.”

Kiba pouts at that. 

“Whatever,” he spits, turning sharply away, “I’m going out!” he declares, walking away with his hand still on Toboe’s wrist, “going to the park.”

Hana casts an amused glance at his defiant behaviour. Meeting eyes with her mother, they chuckle at the sight.

“Try not to get him involved in your pranks,” Hana offers in mild concern.

“Don’t corrupt him,” Tsume is more frank about it.

“I won’t!” Kiba snaps back sharply, then turns to Toboe and screams in his face, “let’s go, girly face!”

This time, Toboe is more baffled than upset with the insult. 

Kiba all but drags Toboe out with him, and Toboe is honestly more than happy to follow along.


	3. the prodigy that can't hear.

“That’s the boy the Hyuuga are taking care of.”

Nori opens the door to her classroom, only to hear two boys whispering to themselves near the back. She perks in to eavesdrop, turning her eyes to the one they were gossiping about.

“He’s deaf, apparently.”

They scoff at the boy, and Nori can’t help but feel curious about the new information.

On the (previously empty) seat behind hers, is a boy with purple hair. His head hangs down as he fiddles with the edge of a book, rubbing a finger over a dog-eared page before unfolding it and flipping it over.

A new student! She’s pleasantly delighted at this information. It was only her second year in the academy, but they’ve never gotten a new student before-- weren’t new students supposed to come in as a first year?

Maybe that Hyuuga house had something to do with it. Nori’s heard that Clan Shinobi houses get privileges, or something.

“What’re you reading?” Nori approaches him to ask.

The boy doesn’t react. So Nori peers closer.

“It’s a novel! Cool, I’ve never read anything other than picture books before!”

She drops into her seat, leaning back so her arms were on the boy’s table.

With a withheld squeak, the boy finally seems to notice her, jumping back slightly and shrinking the book away from the girl.

Nori grins up at him, “Heya!” she greets, “I’m Nori. Nice t’a meet’cha!”

The purple-haired boy blinks, confusedly. In a moment he closed his book, staring blankly back at the girl who was brightly beaming at him.

Then he asks, bluntly, “you are… seaweed?”

A little over-pronounced, his voice sounded a tad strange. But Nori simply shoves aside her observation and smiles brightly back.

“Yeap, yup! That’s what my name means, my grandma named me that. Maybe it was ‘cos we open a sushi house or maybe she was just hungry at the time? or maybe because dad’s favourite food is sushi, I’ll never know,” she rambles, “oh, if you’re new to Konoha, you should definitely try out our sushi! Kogazushi is right around the street from the Academy and--”

She paused when the boy starts looking ready to combust, hands held hesitantly before him like he really didn’t want her to continue.

“Could you…” he starts talking again, eyes fixed on the girl’s, “speak… slower?”

Nori nods, humming in compliance. 

His eyes are yellow, golden like a cat’s. Nori stares, before flashing a close-eyed smile and deciding against repeating herself.

“Hey, what’s your name?” says the girl instead.

The boy seems taken aback. Blinking for a few, contemplative moments, he promptly leaves his book aside and manages to pull a smile onto his face.

It’s a soft, subtle smile, in a huge contrast to the girl’s overly sunshine glory. But it’s genuine.

“My name is Minoru.”

They spend the rest of the time talking slowly. Nori would blabber about her sushi house again. Ask him where he came from-- (a little outside of Konoha, but still in the Land of Fire), why he was here (to study), and the boy would enjoy the slightly rude company.

The boy didn’t ask any questions, but Nori sees him smiling back, answers coming willingly, and so she continues talking through the time.

“Wanna hang out after? I’ll treat’cha to sushi!”

“I am sorry, but I must deny this offer.”

“Awhh, tomorrow then?”

“It would be difficult for me to leave the house.”

“Boo! Just one day, c’mon!”

“...what is ‘boo’?”

Nori all but slams her hands on the table, “that does it, TOBOE!”

A voice on the other end of the classroom shrieks, water bottle flying out of his hand as he jumps out of his skin, arms folded above his head protectively, “I’m sorry!”

“I’m not scoldin’ ya!” she snaps back sharply, waving an arm at the boy, “come’re, I’m gonna kidnap Minorun and ya’re gonna help me!”

“You are going to kidnap me?” Minoru is confused.

“Let’s not!” Toboe whimpers, his long blonde hair sticking out from where he was hiding behind his cousin Kiba. He’s barely started talking, but he already looks ready to bawl.

(Kiba broods on his table, casting an irritated glance at his wimpy cousin, then decides to pretend two morons aren’t fighting around him.)

“I have never been so openly kidnapped before,” Minoru supplies necessarily.

“He doesn’t want to be kidnapped either!” Toboe echoes.

“Nonsense, Toboe. There ain’t anyone that hates my house’s sushi.”

Toboe did a whiplash double take, “there’s sushi? Okay, I’ll help!” 

And immediately, like a reflex reaction, Kiba explodes, “oh, hell no, NO!” he spins to the girl, “stop corrupting him, Seaweed Girl!”

“Who’s corruptin’  _ who _ , mutt? As if y’ain’t the one ta’ drag him around to skip  _ class _ all the time!” Nori retorts sharply, attention completely turning to the boy now, “it’s fer a  _ good _ cause this time, kay?”

“Do it without Toboe, then!” Kiba gnarls, fist raised and shaking. Toboe had a shaky hand on Kiba’s arm but the loud boy ignores it. 

“Set him free, ya possessive jerk!”

“No! Toboe’s too pure for your gorilla tendencies!”

“Mongrel!”

“Chimpanzee!”

“Tsundere!”

“You take that back!”

The banter is cut short by laughter.

All eyes in the room turn to Minoru, who bursts into giggles at the hysterical scene before him. He may not have caught the better of the conversation, but he could catch some of the funnier insults that were more than vocally depicted across the room.

And to him, the oddball new kid, this was a joy.

Against their own better judgement, Nori and Kiba blushes at the sight.

“I hope we get along!” Minoru says, to not just all three of Nori, Kiba and Toboe, but to the class as well.

Somehow, the one that manages an answer is Toboe.

“Nice to meet you too, Minoru-kun!”


End file.
